The School Law Institute

Gary Orfield

Ph.D., is Distinguished Research Professor of Education, Law,
Political Science and Urban Planning at UCLA. His research focuses on the study of civil
rights, education policy, urban policy, and minority opportunity. Co-founder
and director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, he now serves as co-director
of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA. His central
interest has been the development and implementation of social policy, with a
central focus on the impact of policy on equal opportunity for success in
American society. Recent works include eight co-authored or
co-edited books since 2004 and numerous
articles and reports. He has also been involved in
the development of governmental policy and has served as an expert witness or
special master in several dozen court cases related to his research, including
the University
of Michigan Supreme Court case, which upheld the policy of affirmative action in 2003.

Patricia Gandara

Ph.D., is Research Professor of Education in the
Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences at UCLA. She received her
PhD in educational psychology from UCLA. She has been a bilingual school
psychologist, a social scientist with the RAND Corporation, and a director of
education research in the California State Legislature. Since 1990 she has been
a professor of education in the University of California system. She also
served as commissioner for postsecondary education for the State of California,
associate director of the Linguistic Minority Research Institute, and the
co-director of PACE (Policy Analysis for California Education). She is
currently co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at
UCLA and serves as a commissioner on President Obama's Advisory Commission on
Educational Excellence for Hispanics. She
has written or edited seven books and more than 100 articles and reports on
educational equity for racial and linguistic minority students, school reform,
access to higher education, the education of Latino students, and language
policy.

John B. King, Jr.

Ed.D., J.D., is the Senior
Advisor Delegated Duties of Deputy Secretary of Education at the U.S.
Department of Education, a position he assumed in January 2015. In this role,
he oversees a broad range of management, policy, and program functions.
Previously Dr. King served as the Commissioner of Education for the State
of New York. He was among the nation's youngest state education leaders and the
first African-American and Puerto Rican to serve as New York State education
commissioner. Earlier, King served as a Managing Director of Uncommon Schools, a
non-profit charter management organization operating some of the highest
performing urban public schools in New York and New Jersey. He was also a Co-Founder and Co-Director for
Curriculum & Instruction of Roxbury Preparatory Charter School. Dr. King holds a B.A. in Government from
Harvard University, an M.A. in the Teaching of Social Studies from Teachers
College, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and an Ed.D. in Educational
Administrative Practice from Teachers College.

Rhoda E. Schneider

J.D., General Counsel and Senior Associate Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (Institute co-chair). For over 30 years, Rhoda Schneider has been chief legal counsel to the commissioner, state board, and department staff. She has advised six successive commissioners and served twice herself as acting commissioner. Besides providing legal guidance to the commissioner and the agency, she and her staff also publish advisories for school and district leaders, parents and students, and other constituents on the state and federal laws affecting public elementary and secondary schools. The issues of education law and policy that she addresses include standards-based education reform, civil rights, charter schools, school finance and governance, student assessment, special education, school and district accountability, student rights and responsibilities, and educator licensure. Rhoda is an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the editor of the MCLE book, School Law in Massachusetts.

Maree Sneed

J.D., Ph.D., is a senior partner at the Washington, DC law
firm Hogan Lovells and director of the firm’s nationally prominent education
practice. She is on the Board of Directors for Magnet Schools of America. She
has served on the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and
as a board member and secretary of the National School Boards Foundation.
She advises school districts, educational associations, and private companies
in the education sector on state and federal legal issues. Previously she
worked as a teacher and administrator in the Montgomery County Public Schools.

Jay Lefkowitz

J.D., lead plaintiffs’ attorney in Wright v. State of New York, is a senior
partner in the litigation practice of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. He is also an
adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, where he teaches a seminar on Supreme
Court advocacy. He has served as lead trial and appellate counsel in a wide
variety of substantive areas, including shareholder disputes, antitrust, and product
liability. He currently serves on Advisory Boards
for many organizations, including Columbia Law School, NYU Alexander Hamilton
Center and Barnard College. His public
service career includes serving as a senior White House advisor to two
presidents, and as United States Special Envoy on Human Rights in North Korea.
He earned his J.D. in 1987 from Columbia Law School and his A.B. in History
from Columbia College. In its 2013 release of “The 100 Most Influential Lawyers in
America,” The National Law Journal described
him as “a leading voice on school choice issues.”

Dennis D. Parker

J.D., is
the Director of the ACLU National Office's Racial Justice Program, where he
coordinates the racial justice work done by the ACLU's national office and its
affiliates. Parker’s work with the ACLU has brought needed attention to the
school-to-prison-pipeline, which tracks many young Black and Latino students
from the principal’s office to the nation’s prisons. Previously, Parker was Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau under New York State
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. There he
oversaw the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in housing, employment,
voting, public accommodations and credit. He spent 14 years at the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund, where he supervised the litigation of scores of
cases throughout the country in matters involving K-12 education, affirmative
action, and equal educational opportunity. Parker is a graduate of
Middlebury College and Harvard Law School.
He has numerous publications on housing discrimination, educational
equity, affirmative action, and testing, and has served as an adjunct professor
at New York Law School.

Michael A. Rebell

J.D., is an experienced litigator, administrator, researcher, and
scholar in the field of education law. He is the executive director of the
Campaign for Educational Equity and Professor of Law and Educational Practice
at Teachers College, Columbia University. The Campaign seeks to promote equity
and excellence in education and to overcome the gap in educational access and
achievement between advantaged and disadvantaged students throughout the United
States. He is the author of five books and dozens of articles on issues
involving law and education. Previously, Mr. Rebell was the co-founder,
executive director and counsel for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. In CFE
v. State of New York, the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court,
declared that all children are entitled under the state Constitution to the
"opportunity for a sound basic education" and it ordered the State of
New York to reform its education finance system to meet these constitutional
requirements. Mr. Rebell also serves as a consultant to attorneys, advocates
and policymakers involved in education reform and education litigation
throughout the country, and he is currently counsel for the plaintiffs in New
Yorkers for Students Educational Rights v. State of New York.

Perry A. Zirkel

J.D., LL.M., Ph.D., is
University Professor of Education and Law at Lehigh University, where he has
held the Iacocca Chair in Education and has served as Dean of the College of
Education. He has more than 1,400 publications on various aspects of
school law, with an emphasis on legal issues in special education. He
writes a regular column for Principal magazine
and did so previously for both Phi Delta Kappan and Teaching Exceptional Children. Past president of
the Education Law Association and co-chair of the Pennsylvania special
education appeals panel from 1990 to 2007, in 2013 he received the Research
into Practice Award from the American Educational Research Association and the
Excellence in Research Award from AERA’s Division A, and in
2014 he received the University
Council of Educational Administration's Edwin Bridges award for significant contributions to the
preparation and development of school leaders.

Richard Casagrande

J.D., is general counsel to the New York State
United Teachers (NYSUT), a position he has held since 2010. He represents NYSUT as a defendant in Wright v. State of New York. Previously, as a member of Hinman Straub
P.C., he represented individual employees and several public and private sector
unions. He also served for many years as general counsel to the New York State
Public Employees Federation, a union representing over 50,000 professional
State employees. Mr. Casagrande has
litigated many employee rights' cases involving tenure and due process, and has
argued numerous cases before the State Court of Appeals, New York's highest
court. Mr. Casagrande received his B.A.
from Colgate University and his J.D. from Albany Law School where, from 1998
through 2005, he was a member of the adjunct faculty. He is a member of the
Labor sections of the ABA and NYSBA, and has been a frequent CLE presenter on a
variety of labor and employment issues.

Jay P. Heubert

Institute Faculty Chair, is a Professor of
Law and Education at Teachers College and an Adjunct Professor of Law at
Columbia Law School. For thirty years at
Columbia and Harvard, he has taught courses on education law, policy, and
practice for students in education, law, and related fields. His research focuses on civil rights issues,
including desegregation, charter schools’ obligations to serve students with
disabilities, and high-stakes testing. He has also served as chief counsel to the Pennsylvania Dept. of
Education, a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice
Department, a specialist on desegregation and gender equity in Philadelphia,
and a high-school English teacher in rural North Carolina. He also served as
study director to a National Research Council committee conducting a Congressionally-mandated
study of high-stakes testing published as High Stakes: Testing for
Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation. A Carnegie Scholar, in June 2001 he received the Harvard Graduate School
of Education’s annual Alumni Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education.

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Welcome

The Program

The School Law Institute at Columbia University is a national education program available for graduate credit, on a non-credit basis, and in some states for continuing education credits.

The Institute brings to Teachers College a diverse collection of the nation’s leading authorities on education law, policy, and practice. It explores significant recent developments in school law and their impact on policy and practice at the federal, state, district, and school levels. For over 25 years at Harvard and Columbia, this five-day summer Institute has provided policy analysts, policy makers, researchers, new and career educators, and charter-school professionals (board members, administrators, and teachers) with the knowledge and skills they need to advance their educational agendas and minimize legal problems.

Under the guidance of Teachers College Professor of Law and Education Jay Heubert and Massachusetts Department of Education General Counsel Rhoda Schneider, Institute participants enjoy stimulating, informative, and often inspiring conversations that draw on the multi-disciplinary perspectives of law, policy, and practice. Participants learn from an unusually diverse and interesting group of peers, including: scholars, policy analysts, school administrators, teachers, policymakers, advocates, and lawyers from around the U.S. and the tri-state area.

In 2015, the Institute will convene from July 13-17 in comfortable, air-conditioned conference space at Columbia Law School. Ninety-minute sessions will include presentations, large group discussions, small-group work, case studies, and simulations. Faculty will be available to talk with participants throughout the week. Frequent refreshment breaks will provide additional opportunities to continue discussions begun in class.

Who Should Attend?

The Institute addresses the needs and explores the perspectives of policy makers, policy analysts, advocates, attorneys, journalists, and graduate students interested in public K-12 education.

It also addresses the interests and needs of new and career practitioners in public education: building- and district-level administrators, school board members, education-department personnel, guidance counselors, union representatives, teachers and guidance counselors, special education and bilingual/ESL staff, journalists, school lawyers, and advocates interested in public education. It focuses on traditional public schools as well as on charter schools, which are subject to many of the same federal and state laws that apply to traditional public schools.

Participants may earn three graduate credits through Teachers College whether or not they are TC degree candidates. They may also be eligible for continuing education credits. New York participants are not eligible for continuing legal education credits, but legal professionals from other states may be.

Participants can expect to...

Acquire up-to-date knowledge on a variety of significant new developments and trends in school law;

Discuss the relationships between law and educational policy, including the ethical, educational, administrative, political, and financial questions that frequently accompany legal disputes; and